The Book of Secrets (6 page)

He stopped, without turning back to her.

‘It would be difficult to work on the boats if you were not surefooted,’ she said.

‘There are harder things than that. If a man is to keep body and soul together.’

‘Is it because of your foot that my father would not give you work?’

‘He said the Company was full.’

She hesitated, choosing her words with care. ‘I have seen something of what it is like near here.’

He turned to face her again, struggling to match her appearance with something he had heard. ‘Are you the woman who rides alone?’

She started, embarrassed. ‘I have been out once or twice.’

His hard gaze rested on her, trying to gauge her and not succeeding.

‘When did you eat last?’ she said abruptly, wishing to turn his attention away from herself.

‘I didn’t come to beg.’

‘No. But there is no one else at home except a maid. I should like to share my lunch with you. Please. I have little enough company here.’

She thought he would refuse but he did not, as if he had suddenly come to a decision about her. Nor when he entered the house did he behave as if her benevolence was surprising.

‘Where do you come from?’ she asked over lunch.

‘Stoer Point, to the north. It’s rough land, a wild coastline pushing out into North Minch. You don’t know it?’

‘Not yet. Are things as bad as they say up there?’

He eyed her. ‘You must know what they are doing to us here?’

‘I have an idea. It’s hard to sort out the truth of things, from where I am standing. I know about the troubles, of course, and I’m not impressed with what I see of the landlords.’ She paused. ‘But you must understand, people like my family take a different view of these matters. One hears such contradictory things.’

‘The troubles were only a beginning.’ He spoke with rage.

‘Tell me.’

His hands hesitated over the soup which he was eating a little faster than he intended. He leaned towards her. ‘How can I tell you?’ he said. ‘It is beyond words.’

She nodded, ‘Aye. Then show it to me.’

It was high summer and a communion day when Isabella went north to meet Duncan MacQuarrie. She had not told her mother of her meeting with him. If she had been asked to explain the omission, she could not have offered a reason for it.

When next she heard from him, it was through a child, lurking in the Ramsey’s garden. He was a ragged urchin of thirteen or so, with long unkempt hair and bare feet. Mrs Ramsey had sent him away with a stiff admonition which he had appeared not to understand. Afterwards she remarked to her daughter, ‘He made me uneasy, I felt as if he was looking for something, the way he looked past me, into the house. D’you think these beggars from the hills will steal from us?’

‘I’ve not heard anything of the kind,’ said Isabella.

‘They’re said to steal food from the lairds.’

‘Maybe they do, but haven’t the lairds been taking from them?’

‘That’s dangerous talk. Who’s been putting it into your head?’

Isabella sighed. ‘Honestly, mother, I can’t tell you. I know very little. But there’s something wrong out there. I can feel it pushing against us. Can’t you feel it?’

Outside, Isabella caught a glimpse of the boy her mother had seen, staring at the house, then drawing back.

‘I think I’ll walk along the sea front,’ she said.

‘Oh, I don’t feel like it at all today,’ said Mrs Ramsey. She massaged a plump ankle.

‘I can go on my own.’

‘Can you, dear? All right, but don’t go far from the house, will you?’

‘Are you afraid the wild men will snatch me up?’

But sometimes the effort of responding to her daughter demanded more of Mrs Ramsey than she could muster.

When Isabella went outside the boy leapt at her from where he had been sheltering behind a boulder.

‘Miss Ramsey, ma’am.’ He was almost unintelligible. She searched for her Gaelic.

‘I won’t hurt you. How d’you know my name?’ she said softly.

‘Duncan sent me.’ He thrust a paper into her hand and disappeared, absorbed by shadows.

The letter asked that she ride forth to meet Duncan the following Thursday to attend a communion sendee near Lochinver. She was welcome to stay in the home of his sister Willina McRae, a married woman. The service would last until Monday.

Duncan was waiting for her as she rode by the mountain, on the road to the north, and when she came he did not exclaim or show surprise that she was alone. He was on foot, as she had expected, for few of the crofters owned horses. She dismounted and walked by his side. They travelled for mile after mile then, taking turns to ride the horse. Later, they sat on a rock and she offered him food from a basket she had prepared. She saw that he was uncomfortable.

‘Does Mrs McRae expect me?’ she asked.

‘Oh, aye, of course. Not that one more will make much difference. Haven’t you been to an open-air communion before?’

‘It’s different in the east, though I’ve heard of the services.’

‘They expect maybe five thousand.’

She pushed the food towards him, surprised by his lack of enthusiasm.

‘It is the fast day,’ he said. ‘We cannot eat.’

‘I didn’t know that.’

‘I thought you went to the kirk.’

‘Well of course. But I haven’t been to the Lord’s supper in the open air like this. You will have to teach me.’

He looked at the food and smiled. ‘You will know next year,’ he said. ‘As you are not prepared this time, perhaps we should eat after all.’ He tore the bread with strong teeth.

‘Won’t you go in mortal sin?’ she asked.

He looked at her. ‘I’d hardly be going to the Lord’s table with a pure heart, even now.’

‘Mine’s pure enough for both of us,’ she remarked, lowering her eyes.

‘Yours. Is it now?’ He regarded her with amusement, then more seriously. ‘Well. Yes. Maybe it is.’

‘Why should you doubt me? It is true.’

‘Aye. I know. My mockery was in return for yours. Never mind, I won’t approach the table this year.’

‘Oh, but you must.’

He shook his head. ‘I’ve already sinned in my head.’ He touched her hand. ‘You’ve got nothing to fear with me.’

‘I know.’

‘How did you know?’

‘It matters not.’

‘There are others to fear.’

‘I shall be modest.’

‘Yes. I knew that of you.’

They came round a corner and saw a valley near to the base of the hills, chosen as a site where the people could watch the proceedings and hear the speakers. In a quiet, expectant way they gathered on the grass, the young women bareheaded, the married women wearing mutch caps, and the old women with cloaks of muted colour pulled around their heads. Their faces were turned towards ‘the Tent’, a wooden shelter with a window for the clergymen, like a small stage where the ministers would perform their roles. Before the Tent was the communion table, which Isabella saw to be a plank on trestles, covered with white linen. The cloth glinted against the heath. Along each side of the stage there was a bench and near that three posts. On the top of each post was a small box where the people
would place their donations. Already the elders stood near the boxes, guarding them from theft. Their eyes were darting amongst the crowd as it gathered. One scowling man, with a crest of white hair and a bitter mouth, looked straight towards Isabella.

‘Why does he look at me so?’ she whispered to Duncan, although they were well out of earshot.

‘He is watching for the wayward ones.’

‘You mean there will be impropriety?’

‘It is a holiday too, remember, and they come little enough for my people.’

‘This is a strict parish, then?’

‘It hasn’t always been so, but times are changing.’

‘Is there a reason?’

He turned fiercely towards her. ‘Lax ways stand for the old church, which has done nothing for us here. Its ministers are the pawns of the landowners. They are in the employ of the men who have driven us off our lands. We are the dispossessed, the crofters who have nothing left. The sheep,’ and he spat, ‘the sheep have more than us. The blackfaces. Did you not see them as we crossed the moor? Why do you think the land is so empty? Because the lairds have taken for themselves the place where we have always lived and sent us to the edge of the sea — there is scarce room enough there for a man and his wife and child to stand. There is nothing, nothing that is left to us.’ His voice was rising, and around him people were listening and nodding their heads.

When he had finished, and the attention of those listening had been diverted to the latest arrivals, she said: ‘But what of you? Are you strict?’

He shivered, as if a cold breath had touched him. ‘I mean to be,’ he replied in a low voice.

That night at Willina McRae’s house the talk was the same. Duncan’s sister was large and loose-limbed like him, without an ounce of spare flesh on her big bones, and her eyes burned from far back in her head. Rory, her husband, had lit the fire. It glowed with bog-fir, smoky and thick in the corners of the long room where more than twenty people were gathered. Behind a curtain the children slept. The conversation was punctuated with their stirrings and occasional coughs. Everyone present was staying for the communion. Some of
them, whom the others called the Men, were neither ministers nor laymen. They came from wandering bands who acted as intermediaries between the minister and the people. They knew each page of the Bible as well as their own names, although they had scant education. Catechists and mystics, their eyes held the gleam of fanatics. Each of them had long straggling hair and wore a black cloak over his shoulders and a spotted handkerchief around his head. Friday would be their day to speak. Already they were sharpening their oratory.

Some of the Men were to sleep in the McRaes’ cattle barn. In the firelight, one of them stood in front of Isabella.

‘You’re a Sassenach?’ he demanded.

She shook her head, trying not to show her fear or pull away from him.

Duncan spoke up. ‘She was raised in the south. She is a Scotswoman.’

‘You have English ways.’ She saw as he spoke that his gums were bleeding.

‘I was born in London but I lived a long time in Edinburgh, and then in Inverness. My family is of the Edinburgh Society.’

The man spat as Duncan had done earlier in the day, only this time the hatred was directed towards her.

‘Moderates.’

‘I do not know what you mean,’ she said.

But the man had lost interest in her and moved on to others who knew what he was talking about.

‘Tell me what he means,’ she whispered to Duncan.

‘It is to do with the division in the church,’ Rory said, answering for him. ‘There are ministers who do not attend to their business in a diligent way. They take advantage of the people. But now there are people outside of the ministry who are trying to lead the people back to the word. As God has told it. We don’t have money to squander on a clergy who are idle, and drink. There is William MacKenzie at Stoer, one of the worst. He’s nought but a drunken sot, and he gets rich for doing nothing. People perish every day collecting kelp. They fish when they can and starve the rest of the time. Sometimes they’re allowed to till a strip of the poorest soil, and sometimes not. That’s at the pleasure of the owners. We haven’t even got time to grow our potatoes. The children are dying and the women are wasting away.
And if we complain we get turned out, even from that. They’ve got us in the palms of their hands, with just enough money to exist, and if we leave them we’re lost. They know how much they can get away with, for they still need us to gather kelp. Oh yes, they need us all right.’

‘And the ministers do nothing?’

‘Exactly. Bone idle, most of them.’

‘They be bastards,’ said one of the Men. He had not seen Isabella sitting alongside.

‘Tomorrow the Men will speak.’ Duncan told Isabella.

‘And the ministers will allow that?’

‘The ministers would not dare to stop them. The people will listen to them before the ministers. The ministers are afraid.’

One of the Men had risen to his feet. ‘Will you sleep now, my friend?’ called Rory.

‘I go to the hills,’ was the reply. ‘Tomorrow I speak to the question. Tonight I will pray on the hilltop.’

Isabella stirred restlessly.

‘D’you wish you hadn’t come?’ asked Duncan.

‘One part of me is afraid. I didn’t know it would be like this. But it’s all right. I’m glad I came.’

‘It’s not as soft as you’re used to.’

‘It’s something you’ll have to become accustomed to,’ said Willina, who had overheard this.

‘What does she mean by that?’ asked Isabella.

Duncan did not reply but got up to stoke the fire.

Ullapool, 9 July 1812